David Warren Brubeck (/ˈbruːbɛk/; December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012) was an American jazz pianist and composer, considered one of the foremost exponents of cool jazz. Many of his compositions have become jazz standards including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranged from refined to bombastic, reflecting both his mother's classical training and his own improvisational skills. His music is known for employing unusual time signatures as well as superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities.

Often incorrectly attributed to Brubeck, the song "Take Five", which has become a jazz standard, was composed by Brubeck's long-time musical partner, alto saxophonist Paul Desmond.[1] Appearing on one of the top-selling jazz albums, Time Out, and written in 54 time, "Take Five" has endured as a jazz classic associated with Brubeck.[2]

His father had Swiss ancestry (the family surname was originally Brodbeck) and possibly Native American Modoc lineage,[4] while his maternal grandparents were English and German.[5][6][7] Brubeck originally did not intend to become a musician (his two older brothers, Henry and Howard, were already on that track), but took lessons from his mother. He could not read music during these early lessons, attributing this difficulty to poor eyesight, but "faked" his way through well enough that this deficiency went mostly unnoticed.[8]

Intending to work with his father on their ranch, Brubeck entered the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California (now the University of the Pacific), studying veterinary science. He changed to music on the urging of the head of zoology, Dr. Arnold, who told him "Brubeck, your mind's not here. It's across the lawn in the conservatory. Please go there. Stop wasting my time and yours."[9] Later, Brubeck was nearly expelled when one of his professors discovered that he could not read music on sight. Several of his professors came forward, arguing that his ability to write counterpoint and harmony more than compensated, and demonstrated his familiarity with music notation. The college was still afraid that it would cause a scandal, and agreed to let Brubeck graduate only after he had promised never to teach piano.[10]

After graduating in 1942, Brubeck was drafted into the U.S. Army. He served in Europe in the Third Army. He volunteered to play piano at a Red Cross show and was such a hit that he was spared from combat service and ordered to form a band. He created one of the U.S. armed forces' first racially integrated bands, "The Wolfpack".[10] While serving in the military, Brubeck met Paul Desmond in early 1944.[11] He returned to college after serving nearly four years in the army, this time attending Mills College in Oakland. He studied under Darius Milhaud, who encouraged him to study fugue and orchestration, but not classical piano. While on active duty, he received two lessons from Arnold Schoenberg at UCLA in an attempt to connect with high modernist theory and practice.[12] However, the encounter did not end on good terms since Schoenberg believed that every note should be accounted for, an approach which Brubeck could not accept, although according to his son Chris Brubeck, there is a twelve-tone row in The Light in the Wilderness, Dave Brubeck's first oratorio. In it, Jesus's twelve disciples are introduced each singing their own individual notes; it is described as “quite dramatic, especially when Judas starts singing 'Repent' on a high and straining dissonant note.”[13]

Jack Sheedy owned San Francisco-based Coronet Records, which had previously recorded area Dixieland bands. (This Coronet Records should not be confused with either the late 1950s New York-based budget label, nor with Australia-based Coronet Records.) In 1949, Sheedy was talked into making the first recording of Brubeck's octet and later his trio. But Sheedy was unable to pay his bills and in 1949 turned his masters over to his record stamping company, the Circle Record Company, owned by Max and Sol Weiss. The Weiss brothers soon changed the name of their business to Fantasy Records.

These initial Brubeck records sold well, and he recorded and issued new records for Fantasy. Soon the company was shipping 40,000 to 50,000 copies of Brubeck records each quarter, making enormous profits.[14]

The quartet in 1959 during the Time Out sessions. From left to right: Joe Morello, Paul Desmond, Dave Brubeck, Eugene Wright.

In 1951, Brubeck damaged several neck vertebrae and his spinal cord while diving into the surf in Hawaii. He would later remark that the rescue workers who responded had described him as a "DOA" (dead on arrival). Brubeck recovered after a few months, but suffered with residual nerve pain in his hands for years after.[15] The injury also influenced his playing style towards complex, blocky chords rather than speedy, high-dexterity, single-note runs.

When Brubeck signed with Fantasy Records, he thought he had a half interest in the company and he worked as a sort of A & R man for the label, encouraging the Weiss brothers to sign other contemporary jazz performers, including Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker and Red Norvo. When he discovered that all he owned was a half interest in his own recording, he quit to sign with another label, Columbia Records.[16]

In 1954, he was featured on the cover of Time, the second jazz musician to be so honored (the first was Louis Armstrong on February 21, 1949).[17] Brubeck personally found this accolade embarrassing, since he considered Duke Ellington more deserving of it and was convinced that he had been favored for being Caucasian.[18] Ellington himself knocked on the door of Brubeck's hotel room to show him the cover and the only reaction Brubeck could give was, “It should have been you.”[19]

Early bassists for the group included Ron Crotty, Bob Bates and his brother Norman Bates; Lloyd Davis and Joe Dodge held the drum chair. In 1956 Brubeck hired drummer Joe Morello, who had been working with Marian McPartland; Morello's presence made possible the rhythmic experiments that were to come. In 1958 African-American bassist Eugene Wright joined for the group's U.S. Department of State tour of Europe and Asia.[20] Wright became a permanent member in 1959, making the "classic" Quartet's personnel complete. During the late 1950s and early 1960s Brubeck canceled several concerts because the club owners or hall managers continued to resist the idea of an integrated band on their stages. He also canceled a television appearance when he found out that the producers intended to keep Wright off-camera.[21]

In 1959, the Dave Brubeck Quartet recorded Time Out, an album about which the record label was enthusiastic but which they were nonetheless hesitant to release. Featuring the cover art of S. Neil Fujita, the album contained all original compositions, almost none of which were in common time: 98, 54, 34, and 64 were used, inspired by Eurasian folk music they experienced during their 1958 Department of State sponsored tour.[22] Nonetheless, on the strength of these unusual time signatures (the album included "Take Five", "Blue Rondo à la Turk", and "Three To Get Ready"), it quickly went Platinum. It was the first jazz album to sell more than a million copies.[23]

These albums (except the last) were also known for using contemporary paintings as cover art, featuring the work of Joan Miró on Time Further Out, Franz Kline on Time in Outer Space, and Sam Francis on Time Changes.

On a handful of albums in the early 1960s, clarinetist Bill Smith replaced Desmond. These albums were devoted to Smith's compositions and thus had a somewhat different aesthetic than other Brubeck Quartet albums. Nonetheless, according to critic Ken Dryden, "[Smith] proves himself very much in Desmond's league with his witty solos."[24] Smith was an old friend of Brubeck's; they would record together, intermittently, from the 1940s until the final years of Brubeck's career.

At its peak in the early 1960s, the Brubeck Quartet was releasing as many as four albums a year. Apart from the "College" and the "Time" series, Brubeck recorded four LPs featuring his compositions based on the group's travels, and the local music they encountered. Jazz Impressions of the U.S.A. (1956, Morello's debut with the group), Jazz Impressions of Eurasia (1958), Jazz Impressions of Japan (1964), and Jazz Impressions of New York (1964) are less well-known albums, but all are brilliant examples of the quartet's studio work, and they produced Brubeck standards such as "Summer Song", "Brandenburg Gate", "Koto Song", and "Theme From Mr. Broadway". (Brubeck wrote, and the Quartet performed, the theme song for this Craig Stevens CBS drama series; the music from the series became material for the New York album.) In 1961, Brubeck appeared in a few scenes of the British jazz/beat film All Night Long, which starred Patrick McGoohan and Richard Attenborough. Brubeck merely plays himself, with the film featuring close-ups of his piano fingerings. Brubeck performs "It's a Raggy Waltz" from the Time Further Out album and duets briefly with bassist Charles Mingus in "Non-Sectarian Blues".

In the early 1960s Dave Brubeck was the program director of WJZZ-FM radio (now WEZN-FM). He achieved his vision of an all-jazz format radio station along with his friend and neighbor John E. Metts, one of the first African Americans in senior radio management. The final studio album for Columbia by the Desmond/Wright/Morello quartet was Anything Goes (1966) featuring the songs of Cole Porter. A few concert recordings followed, and The Last Time We Saw Paris (1967) was the "Classic" Quartet's swan-song.

Dave Brubeck married jazz lyricist Iola Whitlock in September 1942, remaining married for 70 years up until his death. Iola died on March 12, 2014, from cancer in Wilton, Connecticut, at the age of 90.[27][28]

Four of Brubeck's six children have been professional musicians. Darius, the eldest, is a pianist, producer, educator and performer. (He was named after Dave Brubeck's mentor Darius Milhaud.[29]) Dan is a percussionist, Chris is a multi-instrumentalist and composer. Matthew, the youngest, is a cellist with an extensive list of composing and performance credits. Another son, Michael, died in 2009.[15][30] Brubeck's children often joined him in concerts and in the recording studio.

Brubeck became a Catholic in 1980, shortly after completing the Mass To Hope which had been commissioned by Ed Murray, editor of the national Catholic weekly Our Sunday Visitor. Although he had spiritual interests before that time, he said, "I didn't convert to Catholicism, because I wasn't anything to convert from. I just joined the Catholic Church."[31] In 1996, he received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2006, Brubeck was awarded the University of Notre Dame's Laetare Medal, the oldest and most prestigious[32] honor given to American Catholics, during the University's commencement. He performed "Travellin' Blues" for the graduating class of 2006.

Brubeck founded the Brubeck Institute with his wife, Iola, at their alma mater, the University of the Pacific in 2000. What began as a special archive, consisting of the personal document collection of the Brubecks, has since expanded to provide fellowships and educational opportunities in jazz for students, also leading to having one of the main streets on which the school resides named in his honor, Dave Brubeck Way.[33]

Brubeck recorded five of the seven tracks of his album Jazz Goes to College in Ann Arbor. He returned to Michigan many times, including a performance at Hill Auditorium where he received a Distinguished Artist Award from the University of Michigan's Musical Society in 2006. On April 8, 2008, United States Secretary of StateCondoleezza Rice presented Brubeck with a "Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Diplomacy" for offering an American "vision of hope, opportunity and freedom" through his music.[35] "As a little girl I grew up on the sounds of Dave Brubeck because my dad was your biggest fan," said Rice.[36] The State Department said in a statement that "as a pianist, composer, cultural emissary and educator, Dave Brubeck's life's work exemplifies the best of America's cultural diplomacy."[35] At the ceremony Brubeck played a brief recital for the audience at the State Department.[35] "I want to thank all of you because this honor is something that I never expected. Now I am going to play a cold piano with cold hands," Brubeck stated.[35]

In September 2009, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced Brubeck as a Kennedy Center Honoree for exhibiting excellence in performance arts.[40] The Kennedy Center Honors Gala took place on Sunday, December 6 (Brubeck's 89th birthday), and was broadcast nationwide on CBS on December 29 at 9:00 pm EST. When the award was made, President Barack Obama recalled a 1971 concert Brubeck had given in Honolulu and said, "You can't understand America without understanding jazz, and you can't understand jazz without understanding Dave Brubeck."[15]

Brubeck died of heart failure on December 5, 2012, in Norwalk, Connecticut, one day before his 92nd birthday. He was on his way to a cardiology appointment, accompanied by his son Darius.[45] A birthday party concert had been planned for him with family and famous guests.[46] A memorial tribute was held in May 2013.[47]

The Los Angeles Times noted that he "was one of Jazz's first pop stars," even though he was not always happy with his fame. He felt uncomfortable, for example, that Time had featured him on the cover[48] before it did so for Duke Ellington, saying, "It just bothered me."[49]The New York Times noted he had continued to play well into his old age, performing in 2011 and in 2010 only a month after getting a pacemaker, with Times music writer Nate Chinen commenting that Brubeck had replaced "the old hammer-and-anvil attack with something almost airy" and that his playing at the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City was "the picture of judicious clarity".[30]

In The Daily Telegraph, music journalist Ivan Hewett wrote: "Brubeck didn't have the réclame of some jazz musicians who lead tragic lives. He didn't do drugs or drink. What he had was endless curiosity combined with stubbornness," adding, "His work list is astonishing, including oratorios, musicals and concertos, as well as hundreds of jazz compositions. This quiet man of jazz was truly a marvel."[50]

In The Guardian, John Fordham said "Brubeck's real achievement was to blend European compositional ideas, very demanding rhythmic structures, jazz song-forms and improvisation in expressive and accessible ways. His son Chris told The Guardian "when I hear Chorale, it reminds me of the very best Aaron Copland, something like Appalachian Spring. There's a sort of American honesty to it."[51]Robert Christgau dubbed Brubeck the "jazz hero of the rock and roll generation".[52]

The Economist wrote: "Above all they found it hard to believe that the most successful jazz in America was being played by a family man, a laid-back Californian, modest, gentle and open, who would happily have been a rancher all his days—except that he couldn't live without performing, because the rhythm of jazz, under all his extrapolation and exploration, was, he had discovered, the rhythm of his heart."[53]

The Concord Boulevard Park in his hometown of Concord, California, was renamed to "Dave Brubeck Memorial Park" in his honor. Mayor Dan Helix favorably recalled one of his performances at the park, saying "He will be with us forever because his music will never die."[54]

In the United States, May 4 is informally observed as "Dave Brubeck Day". In the format most commonly used in the U.S., May 4 is written "5/4," recalling the time signature of "Take Five", Brubeck's best known recording.[59]

A new biography of Dave Brubeck, by the British writer Philip Clark, will be published by Da Capo Press in 2019.[60]

^Gioia, Ted. "Dave Brubeck and Modern Jazz in San Francisco" in West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California 1945–1960, University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif., 1998 (reprint of 1962 edition), pp. 63–64.